Proximity

In another study, conducted in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1950s, 431 couples who applied for marriage licenses were interviewed. It turned out that 54% of the couples were separated by a distance of 16 blocks or fewer when they first went out together, and 37% were separated by a distance of 5 blocks or fewer. The number of marriages decreased as the distance increased between the couples’ places of residence.

Two factors appeared to exercise the greatest influence on personal relationships: the location of the apartments and the distances between them. The most important factor in determining who would be emotionally close to whom was the distance between their apartments.

What underlies this? Obviously, you have to meet, but there’s something else going on: repeated exposure.

As marketers know very well (and anyone looking for love should learn about marketing), repeated exposure makes us like almost anything.

…repeated exposure intensifies the dominant emotion in the relationship. When the dominant emotion is anger, repeated exposure enhances the anger. When the dominant emotion is attraction, repeated exposure enhances the attraction.

Love at first sight only happens in 11% of cases and it’s more common in men than women. By the same token, this means first impressions are huge because repeated exposure has a snowball effect.

Looking for love? Then think about where you’re spending your time. What places do you go on a regular basis and do they contain the kind of people you want to date?

Sounds obvious but if you’re spending 99% of your waking hours at work and at home, you’re not allowed to be surprised you’re single.

Character

People like people who are nice and smart and funny and make them feel good and zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Yeah, of course.

Let’s talk about the other side of character. What are you like inside?

Having a strong sense of who you are and a lot of self-confidence is a good predictor of whether you’re going to fall in love with anyone.

People who have a high frequency of love experiences tend to have high self-confidence and low defensiveness… Insecure people who do not have a coherent sense of self and who are not self-actualized tend toward a game-playng style of love and have relationships with low levels of intimacy and high levels of conflict… A study that compared the levels of people’s self-identity to the levels of intimacy in their relationships showed that Erikson was right. The stronger people’s sense of self, the higher their ability to be intimate.

Get your inside straight and the outside might take better care of itself.

Similarity

People are likely to choose as lovers and marriage partners those with similar characteristics. Furthermore, the more similar couples are in personality and background, the more comfortable they are with each other, the more compatible they feel, and the greater their satisfaction from the relationship. Consequently, couples who are similar in attitudes, temperament, and behavior are more likely to stay together over time.

Arousal

In one-fifth of the romantic attraction interviews, the relationships described started during stormy periods in the lives of the men and women interviewed. Sometimes, the heightened emotional sensitivity followed an experience of loss, such as the death of a parent or a painful breakup.

This is why people fall in love on the rebound. This is why we see Stockholm Syndrome. This is one of the reasons musicians are more attractive.

We can’t really tell what is causing our feelings and we have to guess. It’s called misattribution of emotions. So any emotionally arousing situation has the potential to fool us into thinking we’re in love.

When we are aroused, the origin of the arousal does not matter, and it does not matter whether we are aware of the reason. Arousal automatically reinforces our natural response, including attraction to a potential partner.

Some of the couples watched an action movie; others watched a movie that was less arousing. It turns out that the couples who watched the arousing action movie expressed more affection toward each other after the movie than they did before seeing it. The nonaction movie had no effect on the amount of affection expressed by the couples who watched it.

When the woman looked attractive, the arousal caused an increase in the men’s attraction to her. But, when she looked unattractive, the arousal actually caused a decrease in their attraction to her. It is noteworthy that the woman was the same in both cases, and that the difference in the men’s response to her was caused by makeup.

When the women thought they were connected to a lie detector, they admitted being more influenced by the physical attractiveness of the men and described physically attractive men as more desirable. When they were not connected to the apparatus, women tended to underreport the impact of the men’s physical attractiveness on their preferences. Apparently, a social norm tends to inhibit, especially women, from admitting the importance of physical attraction.